Cri monologue (Act 1) — Cynthia's Revels; Or, The Fountain of Self-Love

He will rank even with you, ere't be long. If you hold on your course. O, vanity How are thy painted beauties doted on, By light and empty idiots! how pursued With open, and extended appetite! How they do sweat, and run themselves from breath, Raised on their toes, to catch thy airy forms, Still turning giddy, till they reel like drunkards, That buy the merry madness of one hour With the long irksomeness of following time! O, how despised and base a thing is man, If he not strive to erect his grovelling thoughts Above the strain of flesh? but how more cheap, When, ev'n his best and understanding part, The crown and strength of all his faculties, Floats, like a dead drown'd body, on the stream Of vulgar humour, mixt with common'st dregs! I suffer for their guilt now, and my soul, Like one that looks on ill-affected eyes, Is hurt with mere intention on their follies. Why will I view them then, my sense might ask me? Or is't a rarity, or some new object, That strains my strict observance to this point? O, would it were! therein I could afford My spirit should draw a little near to theirs, To gaze on novelties; so vice were one. Tut, she is stale, rank, foul; and were it not That those that woo her greet her with lock'd eyes, In spight of all th' impostures, paintings, drugs, Which her bawd, Custom, dawbs her cheeks withal, She would betray her loath'd and leprous face, And fright the enamour'd dotards from themselves: But such is the perverseness of our nature, That if we once but fancy levity, How antic and ridiculous soe'er It suit with us, yet will our muffled thought Choose rather not to see it, than avoid it: And if we can but banish our own sense, We act our mimic tricks with that free license, That lust, that pleasure, that security; As if we practised in a paste-board case, And no one saw the motion, but the motion. Well, check thy passion, lest it grow too loud: While fools are pitied, they wax fat, and proud.